The Red Cross

The near silent roar of an engine pulsated through my ears. Rousing me from my slumber.

I lightly stood up ever and looked deeplyat the scene below. A deep black smoky mist rose to touch my skin and i immediately felt an eerie chill.

I was here, at the Red cross.

I leaped of the warship onto the earth and with a mental command I engaged its phantom drive.

A serene spatial storm appeared around it as it wordlessly sublimed inti the environment.

As a divine warship it could submerge into all levels of reality. It could be everywhere and nowhere.

 Yet when I called it would always return to me. I 

carefully surveyed my surroundings.

"Huh its still night?". I thought.

My surroundings were reminiscent of a jet-black void. Completely lightless and without the slightest hue.

Especially with my impaired vision, I could barely see.

I sensed a deep chasm a few meters away from me.

Within my vision deep gray pools of fear sat around its mouth, the only indication the the chasm existed in this lightless plane.

The deathly miasma was thousands of times thicker now, slowly encroaching on my life force, my skin after a few moments of exposure, had already adopted its sickly gray hue.

Then suddenly, deep bestial growls within the darkness warned me of company.

I immediately tensed, calling lightless into my right arm. 

A pair of glowing blue eyes light up in the dark. Black-furred feral wolves with neon blue eyes prowled towards me. The aura around them was volatile and ragefull.

Tainted by this environment, their minds surged with the instinct to destroy, and my appearance had stoked their flames of hunger.

I retreated a step due to the menacing aura surging out of their bodies, foor it clearly carried the might of powerful first circle beast.

They were each stronger even, than the cyclops I had fought.

With a my severely weakened body, I had no hope of surviving.

As they approached I hungrily searched my entire arsenal for a way to survive through this, but with a nearly empty reservoir of divine energy, and the deathly miasma shacking my body I found none.

The only option available to me was the eerily dangerous one I had never dared to touch.

 But as they neared and I was presented with the cruel choice I chose between the two evils

"Sigh." I sighed deeply.

A my remaining Iris suddebly glowed crimson as i urged the dragon soul to rise....but this time.....

[ROOOOOAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR].

A glowing crimson draconic silhouette several miles long rose up from my figure and roared.

The enveloping darkness shook as if fearful.

This time the dragon gods soul pulsed with dignity and power, manifested completely in the world for the first time.

Before i had used it to resist soul demage, so it was still confined to my soul and nver truly manifested.

But today under the pressure of the wolves i had stoked the fires of its rage and brought its fury into our world for the first time.

The two wolves shuddered as their wills collapsed, and then they ran fearfully.

The dragon was the lord of all beast and the roar of my soul came from the dark primordial dragon god itself.

When heard by any beast or person their wills and convictios would be thouroughly shattered and every instinct of theirs would scream at them to escape.

The wolves were much stronger than me yes, but the but the roar of the dragon god would still affect them.

It would cause their will to collapse and fear to run through every cell that constituted their beings. Their only instinct would be to flee. There was no other choice.

Sadly, to manifest the roar of the dragon soul in the material world required a vast amount of power mental fortitude and divine energy. I had none of that right now and so I could only draw from my life force...

I immediately spurted a jet of blood, my vision spinning. I voraciously gasped as I regulated my condition. My body roared in outrage at the irreparable damage I had one unto it.l, punishing me.

I swayed heavily as convulsions run through my body. Several dark spots continually writhed in my field of vison, and a deep cruel pain attacked my core.

"AAAAARGH" I yelled, struggling to rise from my knees.

[Clap Clap Clap]

Suddenly in the dakrness thay had obce been mine alone three unhurried claps sounded within the air.

My heart chilled as I found the source of the sound.

"Truly astounding!" A languid voice mellowed out through the dark.

My eyes swiveled to its origin only to dilate in stupor. The previously ominous environment was met with the radiance of a divinely beautiful goddess.

Her skin was a fair to the point of pallidity, but even thay was complemented plby extremely pure azurite eyes staring through an exquisite crimson phoenix shaped mask.

Her flowing hair boasted the same hue. A vibrant silky scarlet. She was donned in soft scarlet armor that wrapped seductively around her willowy waste.

The curves of her body were tall and swelled and a beautiful vermillion feathered tail escaped from her waist and she stood at a towering height of 9 feet.

'A shura' I thought.

Even dressed as conservatively as she was, I already had problems turning away from her visage. Her face was no doubt a sculpted masterpiece.

"Even as a weakling, you have such a fascinating presence, and you're so handsome too, its just...."

I didn't sense her approach, her seductive voice was suddenly resounding from the space besides me.

She gave me not time to register the situation or ask any question.. A blade of divine enrgy condensed from the tip of her finger and immediately slashed across my face.

"WUUUUUUUUAAAAAARRRRGGGHH" I roared out in pain.

Simultaneously an irresistible force threw me several feet away.

When my cries stilled and I raised my head with great difficulty, where my left eye had been was a mesh of mutilated flesh constantly spurting out blood.

"I thought your face needed a little symmetry but Ayah, why does it look yucky now."The intrude said with a playfully gaze.

Plunged into eternal darkness, I didn't answer.

The descent of this new cruel reality shackled me with pain.

"There aren no grudges between us. I have no hatred you and you have none for me, I don't even...know who you are! Why at all would you."

"Wh…why." I managed to articulate under the pressure of the surrounding darkness.

"Urgh." I groaned as her talon like hands latched onto my jaw. "I am Esther Phenex. Heir tonthe throne of tye Chaos lord Tonraq. There, is that enough?" She asked in an insulting, but sweet tone.

Prhaps i would have spoken, we may never know, her talon like grasp held the bones of my haw and under the crushing force those dainty snow white fingers released, my jaw nearly deforemed.

"Idon't need filth such as you speaking to me." Her voice was suddenly cruel and condescending.

"Just be quiet and oh, try not to allow your mind to break.".

Immediately an intrusive force swept over my mind. My body convulsed in pain as I screamed through my constrained jaws. An endless splitting pain now tormented mind.

I felt a foreign power sweep over every memory, every shame, every disgrace and every smile that made me Adam Embry Cane. It was an exteneoy discomforting feeling, a form of violating and trespassing the deepest part of one's soul.

A disgrace and dishonour no none could forgive.

Esther had done it without a change in exprrssion. The serene glow of the fractured light within her pupils was as calm as ever.

Silence reigned over the darkness as my pain alleviated, though my trouble now began.

Esther stared at me in shock as my mermories played back in her own mind.

"Dragon soul, Kei'eshi, Soul realm. You are actually the template human of legend." Here voiced was laced with shock for a moment, then it immediately exploded into wanton laugher. 

"Hahahahahahahha. How interesting, after witnessing how you defeated my pet the other day, I hoped you would give me a pleasant surprise. But this is beyond my wildest expectations!" She laughed.

She suddenly sighed with great emotion. "How pitiful, are you afflicted by a painful curse?. 

Let me help with that."

A chaotic red light expanded from her arm and rushed into my body.

"Aaaaargh" I screamed once more. Deep glowing crimson markings crawled all over my skin. Bringing forth inhumane pangs of pain wherever they raved.

The fury of Kei'eshi's curse burned like a beast awakening from its slimber.

She had actually casually broken the seal set buly the Shura elders.

"We Chaos phenexes are chaos shuras. I just fed the curse a bit of my chaos energy., besied those pathtic old fools in Vanaheim could never creat a seal thay would impair me!

But dont worry, I'm doing you a good deed. You would have suffered a few more days but now you'll be dead within the hour."

If I had any response to what she had said I didn't show it.

"I also wish it hadn't come to this. I would have been happy to strip your soul realm and dragon soul away from you but sadly that is impossible. 

A even your pathetic current existence cannot be allowed to live. So unfortunately.." As she spoke her form levitated. We stopped directly over the chasm. The convulsions that run through my body grew fiercer. 

"Don't worry you will be flayed alive as the muscles and tendons are stripped of your bones, which shall also decay into nothing. A slow painful process. Quite fun actually."

I felt my body suspending above the deathly chasm.

A cruel smile played out slowly oflver Esther's lips as she prepared to drop me.

Then suddenly an outrage voice screamed. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!".

"Oh?" Esther shifted her gaze curiously. 

I on the other hand trembled visibly.

'This presence' I realised.

A bright golden light was surging from the imprint of my pall as a few meters away, donning her true form, she faced the newcomer with unparalleled hostility. Even in the lightless dark her body radiated a powerful emarald glow. 

Several vines and tress rose in anger to their master's behest. Exuding the same blinding green light.

"A void fey. No, a royal void Fey." Esther's eyes suddenly shone with enlightenment as she realised. "You are the one from his memories."

 "You actually left a split soul with this mortal." Esther exclaimed incredulously.

"What did you do to him!?" Theia asked frigidly, for those few moment where she saw his horrendous wounds a tremor surged from the bottom of her soul.

Her sorrow for me, and vengeful rage stemming from the fact that I had been hurt began to coalesce into a baleful aura around her.

"Angry are we?" Esther chuckled. "A mere condensed split soul. If you had the memories of your true self, you would have surely realized how useless your rage is, for even your father could never hope to defeat me!"

Her words never made it to Theia, no her mind was too overcome with rage.

"YOU....DESERVE....TO.....DIE!!!!!"

A furius demonic voice tunneled out of Theia's delicate lips as the a poisonous green light, a side of her power she had ever known, gathered around her.

A wave of this power solidifed before her and rose hundreds of meters into the air before mercilessly rushing towards Esther. 

Unfortunately all it took was a simple wave of esthers hand and alll that power, disispated into nothing.

"To take such a risk for a mere mortal. How romantic." Esther cooed as she approached a raging Theia, destroying her attacks with simplest of motions.

"I'm quite saddened you know. A woman who lives 

for the sake of a man. There is nothing more 

worthless in the world." Esther soghed with a shake of her head.

 "And you had soo much potentiat too, at least several times more than more than your father!" She lamented.

"Valiant effort Really." Esther praised as she shattered another wave of torrential poisonous enrgy to nothing, her figure moved like a ghost, and she was suddenly in front of Theia's figure, her hand clamping around Theia throat

The only response Theia made were the choking sounds that escaped her now bloodless lips an her wildly onening . "Now perish!"

Esther had long sice left my spasming form at the chasms mourh and i had long since kost my five senses, still those words fell onto my ears with perfect clarity. 

'She is going to die?'

'No I don't want that!'

'As if I woul ever let anyone...!'

'HARM HER RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!

Despite the pain coarsing through my body i managaed to rise.

Channeling my fear and despair I opened my mouth and let out the ghoulish scream of the god of fear one last time.

[WHHHOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!]

This time it sounded not like a scream but a force kf nature. A deathly, terrifying scream of skeletal wind.

Esther turned to face me too late as my scream had already found her.

[BBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM]

Eveyrything around her devolved into chaos and was destrued, yet somehow not even the tiniest bit of power had touched Theia who was being held by her.

Despite having no sight I was eerily certain thay my scream had found Esther.

However even after my voice finally dissipated her imposing aura still proudly sat in the space infront of me.

"Not impressed." She said with a smirk.

"Let me show you both." She sang. "The reason why the crimson phenexes boast indomitable power."

Immediately a bloody scarlet chaotic light burst from her. Around her reality unknitted into atoms.

Theia's eyes locked me one last time as she vanished within the chaos, her form dissociated before my very eyes. Destroyed and disassembled in completion. Reduced to nothing.

She had only been a split soul, and yet my heart was saddled with an impossible amount of pain.

"Finally were are alone!" Esther beamed, approaching me.

The marks of the curse had already rooted itself deeply in me, causing me pain with the slightest movement.

Still my lips moved as I spoke in a voice that was barely audible. "I will destroy you one day!"

Esther smiles then...[bang]

The ground beneath me was destroyed by her and then my body was sinking....sinking into the Abyss.